I don't have an AIS device. Can I report my own positions by other means?

AIS is great, but there are also other means of reporting or collecting vessels’ positions.

For example, a small vessel may be equipped with a GPS device in order to report her positions to other onboard devices by using an NMEA connection. A PC could be collecting this NMEA data through its serial port and sending it to our central database. Off-line collection of data is also possible - in this case, transfer to our servers would take place whenever a network connection became available.

Alternatively, you could use the OnCourse/mAIS application on your mobile device (iOS or Android) on board to be reporting the positions of your vessel directly to MarineTraffic.

Any shipping company would benefit by using a proprietary system to be following its fleet. Even if the reporting is not in real-time but only sporadic, a vessel's last known position remains a valuable information. Publishing this information through MarineTraffic would also be possible!

We can collect and process ships’ positions by any automated method and in any format, including (but not limited to):

a standardized email message sent to us, containing the vessel's position

accessing a web service on our server where the position information is entered

allowing our service to access your data

sending us a file containing a batch of previously recorded data, in text, csv, xls, xml, json or other formats

sending us the NMEA data feed of your boat, which may also include other valuable data, such as wind speed and direction, sea depth, water temperature, etc.